Baldur's Gate RTwP vs TB in Baldur's Gate 3 - Discuss!

[Lichtbringer]

RIP largest thread on the Baldur's Gate 3 Steam forum. It has been up since July, but now Larian has finally had enough.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1086940/discussions/0/1644295067077493077/

 

[Lacrymas]

I like how that thread starts strong - "I like TB games, but I think the BG games should remain not casual."

 

[Atchodas]

well he is right tho casuals love their tb combat because you cant really fail in that

 

[fantadomat]

I like how that thread starts strong - "I like TB games, but I think the BG games should remain not casual."

Well the TB is more of casual than rtwp,you do need a lower skill level to be good at it.

 

[Lichtbringer]

Well, good turn-based is certainly not casual, but it is console and disabled friendly, so there is that.

 

[fantadomat]

Well, good turn-based is certainly not casual, but it is console and disabled friendly, so there is that.

I agree,it is not a casual,but it is more casual than rtwp.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

The difference between turn-based and RTWP is not that the former is more casual than the latter, but rather that the former can be the basis for a really good combat system (ToEE), while the latter, at most, only for a passable one (BG2).

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Actually, I have a good evidence for this claim.

The turn-based mode makes Deadfire a better game.
The turn-based mod makes Pathfinder: Kingmaker a better game.

Surely, being turn-based is not a sufficient condition for the combat system to be good. But it seems to be a necessary one.

As for casuality, I think any system can be casual, if it is too streamlined. It does not depend on whether it is turn-based, RTWP or even real-time.

E.g. Diablo combat system is even more dependent on player's reflexes than BG2's one. But from this it doesn't follow that BG2's combat is more casual.

Also... chess. Chess is not more casual than soccer, for instance.

 

[Ismaul]

Get the fuck outta here you lot.

RTwP is the casual system, not TB. It is built with the assumption that you don't need to micro-manage your party most of the time except boss fights. In fact it'll just play itself in RT while you make some pauses to issue the rare vanity command. Party A.I. has been developed to do just that. You even got behavioral presets and shit so you can feel hardcore while the game plays itself.

No, the non-casual system is the one where you decide of every action yourself and deal with the consequences. It's the one in which you can't just cancel your action while it's underway. The one where you need to plan ahead and set your defenses for the future, 'cause once your turn is over it's your enemies' and if you're out in the open like a retard you'll get ass-raped.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Don't let your preferences rewrite history. Turn-based systems existed because they had to--there was no workable alternative. Digital mediums changed this requirement and allowed quicker resolution and better simulation. Sadly, few developers have risen to the occasion to actually develop RPG mechanics to utilize these strengths. The Baldur's Gate series merely came the closest, and made some great games in the process. Lasers were invented decades before anyone found practical uses for them. Now they are used prolifically. Sometimes the technology outpaces people's ability to cope with it. *cough*

 

[Xeon]

Both system seem alright for me for the most part except I kinda don't like how chaotic RTwP ends up in big fights, I really can't tell what ends up happening and it feels a lot of hassle to keep track of everything going on, TB seems a lot more comfortable and you are aware of everything going on.

Trash mobs I prefer RTwP tho, easy fights that can be easily won is kinda of a hassle to do in TB, turn by turn takes too much time. In RTwP I can just send my party and auto attack most times does everything, no challenge or anything and just a waste of time.

 

[Ismaul]

Trash mobs I prefer RTwP tho, easy fights that can be easily won is kinda of a hassle to do in TB, turn by turn takes too much time. In RTwP I can just send my party and auto attack most times does everything, no challenge or anything and just a waste of time.

Exactly. Trash mobs is where RTwP shines. Such greatness.

 

[fantadomat]

Get the fuck outta here you lot.

You do know that butthurt old failing people like you that constantly screech that X game doesn't cater to their TB fetish are turning people away from the whole TB thing. By this point i am so annoyed by losers like you pushing their garbage that i do hope the whole TB genre dies in flames and we never see another TB game,only to see you cry in the corner,broken and miserable!

 

[Lacrymas]

TB is faster if we are allowed to skip animations (which we always should be), so the tempo/speed of the gameplay is in favor of TB. Really, though, it's enough to just point at chess to dissuade any notions of the casualness of TB.

 

[Atchodas]

TB is faster

NIGGA PLEASE

 

[Atchodas]

if we are allowed to skip animations (which we always should be)

IF and SHOULD being the keywords here because that like never happens

 

[Ismaul]

You do know that butthurt old failing people like you that constantly screech that X game doesn't cater to their TB fetish are turning people away from the whole TB thing. By this point i am so annoyed by losers like you pushing their garbage that i do hope the whole TB genre dies in flames and we never see another TB game,only to see you cry in the corner,broken and miserable!

Damn, you're the one leeking butthurt here my man.

I don't want all games to be TB, what are you smoking? I'm just arguing that RTwP is made for more casual play and trash mobs. And actually surprised that many think TB is the casual combat system.

You're quite the resentful little man, to be driven to such spiteful hopes based on a discussion about combat system design.

I'll grant that maybe your English is weak and you don't know the actual meaning of "get the fuck outta here!", and instead took it literally?

 

[fantadomat]

You do know that butthurt old failing people like you that constantly screech that X game doesn't cater to their TB fetish are turning people away from the whole TB thing. By this point i am so annoyed by losers like you pushing their garbage that i do hope the whole TB genre dies in flames and we never see another TB game,only to see you cry in the corner,broken and miserable!

Damn, you're the one leeking butthurt here my man.

I don't want all games to be TB, what are you smoking? I'm just arguing that RTwP is made for more casual play and trash mobs. And actually surprised that many think TB is the casual combat system.

Then why are we talking about TB in BG3 thread,a game known to be a cornerstone of rtwp subgenre? And nobody think that the TB is a casual mode,it is a lot easier because it is turn based and it is a lot easier to read the flow of battle compared to rtwp. In its pure forms rtwp is more complex than tb,still the actual complexity depends on the devs desire and the system they implement.

You're quite the resentful little man, to be driven to such spiteful hopes based on a discussion about combat system design.

Sure,i just got fed up with all the TB fanatics spewing shit for the last 3 years. It gets annoying when the hate flows only one way. I am yet to see a post where somebody says that tb is shit and X should be rtwp,action or some other system. But i have see maybe 1000 posts of butthurt retards screeching how only TB is a good system and how they won't play anything else and how the game they didn't play is total shit because it doesn't have TB. Soo cry me a river for me being spiteful!

I'll grant that maybe your English is weak and you don't know the actual meaning of "get the fuck outta here!", and instead took it literally?

Ahhh that is lack of a cultural knowledge about inferior culture,not not knowing the meaning of a phrase. Also English and american are different.

 

[Ismaul]

Then why are we talking about TB in BG3 thread,a game known to be a cornerstone of rtwp subgenre?

1) The game might very well be TB. There's an argument to be made that it should be, since D&D is TB. And BG3 is a D&D game first, a BG game second, especially since it's a new dev, decades later, and "Baldur's Gate" is re-used mostly for name recognition. Also Larian never did RTwP, but did some enjoyable TB games. And it's about time the D&D flagship cRPG was more faithful to the rules.

2) I was answering people saying TB was for casuals while RTwP was hardcore. This is demonstrably false: at its most hardcore/complex, RTwP is simply a pause-fest and a visual clusterfuck, OR an automated game.

Sure,i just got fed up with all the TB fanatics spewing shit for the last 3 years. It gets annoying when the hate flows only one way. I am yet to see a post where somebody says that tb is shit and X should be rtwp,action or some other system. But i have see maybe 1000 posts of butthurt retards screeching how only TB is a good system and how they won't play anything else and how the game they didn't play is total shit because it doesn't have TB. Soo cry me a river for me being spiteful!

Make the argument, let's see you try to defend RTwP instead of getting butthurt. It would be better than you accusing everyone of screeching because they don't conform to your preferences.

Also, it's not because one likes TB over RTwP that we'd want everything to be TB. I very much like RT without pause and action gameplay. They're just different systems with their respective strengths, and the character and combat system must designed to take advantage of those strengths and not play into their flaws. RTwP is trying to combine the tactical depth of TB with the fluidity of RT, but as it happens they're antithetical so it ends up just being the worst of both worlds, unless it's just basically an RT game with occasional pause.

 

[Kaivokz]

Also, it's not because one likes TB over RTwP that we'd want everything to be TB. I very much like RT without pause and action gameplay. They're just different systems with their respective strengths, and the character and combat system must designed to take advantage of those strengths and not play into their flaws. RTwP is trying to combine the tactical depth of TB with the fluidity of RT, but as it happens they're antithetical so it ends up just being the worst of both worlds, unless it's just basically an RT game with occasional pause.

There are things that TB cannot do that RT(wP) can. For example, if I want my archer to take the high ground, my fighter to charge forward and my cleric to start casting a spell, in TB that takes 3+ turns (probably at least 15 seconds) and it flows in a fragmented path. It does not maintain verisimilitude and, more importantly, it does not replicate the complexity of a real tactical situation. RTwP avoids fragmentation of the timeline; if I order my party to execute a certain tactical plan, the archer, the fighter and the cleric will all begin to enact their individual parts of that plan simultaneously and the enemies will all enact their chosen plan simultaneously.

After fragmentation of the timeline, and following from it, disruption is the second idea RTwP can handle better than TB. If there is a disruption that needs to be addressed, it occurs at the same time for all of my party members and all of the enemies. Suppose I formulate the above tactical plan in a TB game and the initiative looks like this: Archer -> Enemy1 -> Enemy2 -> Fighter -> Enemy3 -> Cleric. By the time any of the enemies have acted, my archer has already completed one 'round' worth of his part of the plan. Now, in an asynchronous twist, all enemy moves can now take into account the move of my archer, and then after Enemy 1 & 2 move, the plan of my fighter and cleric can take into account the moves of those enemies. This is not just an argument from simulation or realism, but a statement that the tactical experience is fundamentally different in TB and it lacks a certain complexity by fragmenting our tactical choices into bite sized pieces.

Both of these things can also be addressed with simultaneous turn-based combat. I have not played any games that do this system well, though maybe Flamberge will when it is out of early access. I might actually prefer simultaneous turn-based to RTwP, but I do prefer RTwP to TB, if all other systems are of equal merit. My preference listing for combat systems in RPGs is roughly: RTwP > tactical/strategy TB > TB (like JRPGs). I can enjoy all of them, though.

 

[Ismaul]

Kaivokz

No one's denying that TB has limitations. The way it abstracts time flow is one. Which is why designers should focus on the chosen combat resolution system's strengths when designing.

My point about RTwP is simply that it tries to combine the strengths of TB and RT but fails. And its specific strengths are flaws IMO. I will explain why.

Let me introduce you to the phase-based combat system, which might be what you call simultaneous TB. It's the original D&D system before it went pure TB with 3E. It has an action selection phase where everyone selects their actions, followed by a real-time action resolution phase where all actions are resolved simultaneously. It does what you want: no fragmentation of the time flow, simultaneous actions, possibility of action disruption. Even more, you can't just cancel your action if it becomes invalidated by the actions of another without consequence: in AD&D anyways if you wanted to change your action because it became impossible it happened at the end of the resolution phase. Action speed was an important stat too.

That's a much superior system than RTwP, removes the need to pause at every interval since action choice happens at a set time, makes anticipating enemies' actions more important, etc. It's a much better combination of TB and RT, giving each their distinct phase. It has one of the "weaknesses" of TB though, you must choose every character's actions, there's no automation, so casuals can't just let it play out on auto-attacks and assume control of one or two things. So it's bad for casuals and bad for a game with trash mobs where action selection would be a waste of time. Removing those is just a selling point for me, but it explains why designers go for RTwP rather than phase-based. Casuals and filler encounters. Those are RTwP's specific "strengths". For everything else, you're better served with another system.

I'd like more phase-based games too.

Edit: One could say that phase-based systems have a potentially important flaw when used in computer games rather than PnP: you're basically relegated to an observer role during the resolution phase, watching things unfold, animations and shit. It would also have the visual clusterfuck flaw of RTwP. There haven't been much phase-based games so it's hard to say how much the observer role would be problematic, or if you'd be engaged enough looking at the outcome unfold and thinking of your next moves for a couple of seconds.

 

[Grauken]

Kaivokz

Edit: One could say that phase-based systems have a potentially important flaw when used in computer games rather than PnP: you're basically relegated to an observer role during the resolution phase, watching things unfold, animations and shit. It would also have the visual clusterfuck flaw of RTwP. There haven't been much phase-based games so it's hard to say how much the observer role would be problematic, or if you'd be engaged enough looking at the outcome unfold and thinking of your next moves for a couple of seconds.

That's why phase-based is used mostly in Wizardry and Wizardry-like games, where fast combat resolution and few visuals are needed

 

[Cael]

\
Both of these things can also be addressed with simultaneous turn-based combat. I have not played any games that do this system well, though maybe Flamberge will when it is out of early access. I might actually prefer simultaneous turn-based to RTwP, but I do prefer RTwP to TB, if all other systems are of equal merit. My preference listing for combat systems in RPGs is roughly: RTwP > tactical/strategy TB > TB (like JRPGs). I can enjoy all of them, though.

No. Simultaneous turn based combat is a crapshoot. There is no time to react to enemy moves that a RT or TB combat affords. You can only hope that the enemy isn't going to pull something that you should have been able to counter but can only watch helplessly as the animations complete.

 

[Kaivokz]

Edit: One could say that phase-based systems have a potentially important flaw when used in computer games rather than PnP: you're basically relegated to an observer role during the resolution phase, watching things unfold, animations and shit. It would also have the visual clusterfuck flaw of RTwP. There haven't been much phase-based games so it's hard to say how much the observer role would be problematic, or if you'd be engaged enough looking at the outcome unfold and thinking of your next moves for a couple of seconds.

Phase-based is what I meant by simultaneous turn-based and I would like to see more devs try their hand at it, too. I imagine it has even less market appeal than RTwP, though, so odds are low on that.

I think the observer role is actually something RTwP can uniquely (for squad based games) avoid. Imagine you give the following compound command to your fighter: (1) move toward that mage and then (2) swing your sword at him. Right after (1) and before (2) the mage finishes casting a spell that makes him impervious to physical damage of the sort the fighter is going to do. You know this and decide that it would be better to try to trip him instead, but with a phase-based system the fighter will swing his sword anyway—unless the phase break down is either very minute to allow for fine reactions or you can interrupt the phase at any time to order new actions or to cancel or alter in some defined way the current action. The first could work depending on how it is handled, but it could be cumbersome and might not avoid the feeling that "this character would not have done that "in the real world", but was forced to on account of my inability to change his orders mid-phase." The second is just RTwP.

To be honest with you, I am not inclined to argue that either system is superior, but I think RTwP is closer than traditional TB to capturing the rich tactical experience that I enjoy. I also think I am probably in the minority in that I found the co-op gameplay of BG/IWD to be more fun than the co-op gameplay of D:OS.

 

[Fairfax]

It has an action selection phase where everyone selects their actions, followed by a real-time action resolution phase where all actions are resolved simultaneously.

It isn't simulataneous, though. 1E has priorities for each action type, with possible ties:

2E default system was simplified: 1d10 (and potential modifiers) rolled every round for each side, and most of each side's actions are resolved together. Although it's faster (and the DMG makes it clear that it's the main reason for it), it's shallower than 1E's system, and I find it a bit too volatile in general. However, as with everything AD&D, the system is modular and can easily be improved with optional and/or house rules without breaking anything. The rulebooks include two variants: Group Initiative (one roll for each side) and Individual Initiative (one roll for each character), with modifiers depending on each character's actions, weapon speed factors, casting times, items, etc.

Edit: One could say that phase-based systems have a potentially important flaw when used in computer games rather than PnP: you're basically relegated to an observer role during the resolution phase, watching things unfold, animations and shit. It would also have the visual clusterfuck flaw of RTwP. There haven't been much phase-based games so it's hard to say how much the observer role would be problematic, or if you'd be engaged enough looking at the outcome unfold and thinking of your next moves for a couple of seconds.

If it played out like Frozen Synapse, yeah, but that's not the ideal phase-based system, especially for RPGs.

Let's say the system is non-simultaneous. You declare "Move and Attack". Although you can't switch actions later, there's room for adjusment during the resolution phase. When your turn comes up, you still have to decide where you're going and who you're attacking. You should also be able to cancel the movement and/or the attack entirely. Maybe the target you had in mind already died, maybe the enemy acted first and charged you, etc.

In other words: the declaration phase is when you decide what you'll try to do. The declaration phase is when you decide how or if you'll do it.